The 10 Beers We Dare You to Drink

October 11, 2010

One of the most sacred gauntlets of man-dom is the “bar bet.” This glorious tradition of making your friends do stupid, dangerous, and sometimes lethal challenges in the name of defending their honor as a man cannot be dismissed. Next time one of your so-called “friends” makes you secure your manhood by snorting a line of Tabasco or announcing to a crowded bar that you’d take a bullet for Justin Bieber, try laying one of these anabolic ales on them.

When you think of bar food, you think of deep fried meats covered in a generous helping of melted cheese and butter. The last kind of food anyone would expect to see in a bar is some gooey mound of grass clippings that looks, tastes, and smells like they spent their entire life in the ocean. That’s why the makers of Kelpie Beer made a beer out of it...a kelp-flavored beer, better known as “seaweed.” The Willams Bros. Brewery of Scotland uses a specific type of delicious-sounding seaweed called “bladder rack” that they mash into the barley and serve up in a dark chocolate brown ale. It’s like drinking a sea breeze except you can actually taste the sea.

9. Tactical Nuclear Penguin

Source: BrewDog Beer

This brew might sound like the cutest name for a weapon of mass destruction since the U.S. Army dubbed one of their 30-megaton nuclear warheads “Sweet Lurleen,” but it packs a punch that could make an Everclear enema feel like a tropical breeze in your colon.

The BrewDog Brewery, a company known for releasing very strong craft beers, topped the blood alcohol level of their clientele with this 32-percent proof beer that started a long line of proofing wars between various breweries as they each tried to top each other with higher alcohol contents. This might explain why everyone in Great Britain keeps driving on the wrong side of the road.

8. Exit 1 Bayshore Oyster Stout

Source: Flying Fish

When you’re done working at the end of a long, hard, working man’s day, there is only one thing that can help you unwind: raw oysters. The only problem is all that shucking and tugging and pulling and squirting just for a measly little piece of protein that couldn’t fill you up if you put it in a blender and liquefied it with barley and alcohol…hey, wait a minute!

The makers of this “oyster essence” stout heat up the protein of this mighty mollusk to give their “Guinness-style beers” a “mineral-like” quality. If this sounds like the feverish idea of a crazy modern drunk, you’d be wrong. The oyster-infused beer dates back to the late 1930s when a British brewery tried to make a batch in order to improve the head of their beers. One of the cans turned, however, so they chucked the idea into the trash bin. It’s probably the only time in alcoholic history that being a beer taste tester had no fringe benefits.

7. Sink the Bismarck!

Source: BrewDog Beer

Once again, the BrewDog brewery has tried to up the alcohol wars with another MOAB (replace the “B” for “Bomb” with “Beer”) that could make your drunkest alcoholic give up the hooch and start showering again.

This bitey bit of brew carries an alcohol content level of 41 percent, a number that is higher than most whiskeys or vodkas. It, of course, is named after the famed WWII German battleship that became the biggest target in the ocean after it destroyed a British battlecruiser prompting Prime Minister Winston Churchill to order his famous command for which the beer is named. I look forward to their other high-proof, horrific disaster-inspired beers that are sure to be called “Oh the Humanity,” “Damn the Torpedos,” and “Bring It On.”

6. La Dragonne

Source: DrinksOverDearborn.com

This dark brew might look like your average bock bit of bitter heaven until the bartender serves it to you while wearing a set of oven mits and a rubber coal-shoveling apron.

This Swiss concoction of honey and fruit has zero carbonation and is supposed to be served hot, 167 degrees Fahrenheit to be exact, so that the spices in the beer can pop when they roll across your tongue and down your very confused esophagus. It’s the only beer you can guzzle that “comes out” at a lower temperature.

This German brew can only be consumed like a fine whiskey, one shot at a time. That’s because it’s 40 percent alcohol by volume and drinking it a whole pint at a time is like chugging an entire bottle of Jack Daniels through your nose. Only 40 bottles of the stuff were ever made, so chances are you if you get your hands on one, you want it to last. Unless your goal is to die broke, drunk, and happy (those last two are redundant).

This green beer might look like a tasty St. Patrick’s Day treat from the shady side of the glen, but one taste will turn that beautiful green field of flowing grass into a fiery wasteland of burning and pain. That’s because it’s actually infused with the essence of wasabi, that green pasty glob of sushi goodness that easily confused Japanese tourists have been confusing for ice cream since trade relations were opened to the world again. Chugging this barley bad boy is like French kissing a dragon that’s just eaten a big handful of Hot Tamales.

3. Start the Future

Source: Koelschip

If you thought BrewDog’s “Tactical Nuclear Penguin” and “Sink the Bismarck!” brews were exercises in self-destruction, get ready to meet the Jazzercise of extreme drinking.

This Dutch brew currently beat out BrewDog's attempts to topple the proofing level of our livers with a beer that has a whopping 60 percent of alcohol content by volume. It currently represents the final blow in the alcohol content wars until BrewDog develops a beer that’s so strong, it can strip paint off a car with its smell.

2. Kwispelbier

Source: Terrie Berenden

If you saw this brew on the shelf of your neighborhood beer store, you might not think anything unusual of it until the store’s owner pulls it off the shelf and pours a generous portion of it in his dog’s water dish.

That’s because this steak-flavored beer from Holland is the first and only beer brewed just for dogs. Of course, it’s non-alcoholic and can’t get your dog drunk but just imagine the hilarity that would ensue if you could get one of your meatheaded friends to guzzle down a few sips before spitting right back in your face. On the upside, it would give them an excellent source of Vitamin B and a shinier coat that lasts all day.

1. The End of History

Source: BrewDog Beer

This dangerous-sounding beer may not have a warning label that makes temperance advocates bleed from the eyes.

It doesn’t have the highest proof in the world, although 55 percent is enough to make even the most staggering drunk go blind.

It doesn’t even have weird ingredients like malted whale penis or fermented haggis.

It’s the bottle that makes this beer so bodacious. The BrewDog brewery might have lost the proofing wars, but they win weirdest in show for this beer brand: a bottle encased inside of a dead and mounted rodent like a squirrel, weasel, or rabbit. It’s the only beer you don’t mind drinking out of a paper bag whether you’re walking down a busy Interstate or sitting in your favorite neighborhood bar.